Note 667 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES (continued 2)
Reading edition
"Friday, June 14. The Bill against Incest was passed with the Deputies, four and twenty Nos, and seven and twenty Yeas. The Ministers gave in their Arguments yesterday in Writing; else it had hardly gon, because several have married their wives sisters, and the Deputies thought it hard to part them. 'Twas concluded on the other hand, that not to part them, were to make the Law abortive, by begetting in people a conceipt that such Marriages were not against the Law of God."—Sewall, Diary, in 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., V, 407; cf. McKenzie, in Mem. Hist. Bost., II, 197.